By Ann Roosevelt
As the Army works to rebalance the force strained by nearly seven years of war, one of its top priorities is transforming to a force that can meet future challenges, according to Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey.
“We are still committed to building that campaign quality expeditionary force that can support the combatant commanders across the spectrum of conflict,” Casey said at the Association of the United States Army Institute For Land Warfare breakfast yesterday.
The global strategic environment Casey sees is one of persistent conflict, with the United States at war with global extremist terrorist network.
“As I look at the future I see a long-term ideological struggle,” he said. “And I see that struggle fueled by global trends.”
All these trends have positives and negatives he said. For example, while globalization brings prosperity for many, it also brings poverty for those who are not participants. By 2015, he said, 2.8 billion people around the world will be living below the poverty level.
Another example is technology, the Internet technology that brings knowledge and information to almost anyone with a computer also provides a way for terrorists to communicate.
Other trends include competition, climate change and national disasters, to name a few.
“The two that bother me most: weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists and safe havens, places around the world where the local [authorities] either can’t or won’t police their own territory,” Casey said. “That’s what keeps me up at night,” is his response to that oft-asked question.
“There are about 1,100-1,200 terrorists groups out there and most of them are actively seeking weapons of mass destruction,” he said.
All these trends lead to the need for forces that can meet those challenges for the United States in the future.
To meet this commitment to a transformed force, the Army next month will release a new document discussing full spectrum operations and how the service should address it.
“As I look at it I see a conflict as a mix, a hybrid as irregular warfare and conventional warfare fought primarily in urban areas,” he said. Consider that by 2020 60 percent of the world will live in urban areas. “It’s going to be fought, I think, [more] with non-state actors and individual groups than it will necessarily be than state actors.” However, the service can’t turn its back on the possibility of state-to-state conflict.
What Casey is getting at in aiming at a full spectrum force was stated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in October that a principal challenge for the service was to “regain its traditional edge at fighting conventional wars while retaining what it has learned–and relearned–about unconventional wars–the ones most likely to be fought in the years ahead.”
In irregular warfare the adversary does not adhere to the rules of war, and fighting is more among the people than around the people–skills not found in conventional warfare, Casey said.
“We’re going to depend on others for our success,” he said. That means drawing on all elements of national power, and the service needs the capability, the integrating mechanisms to pull it all together.
Additionally, the Army needs for the future force is the ability to apply precise lethal effects. That means having precise intelligence and weapons.
The future force will also be operating with indigenous forces and allies, and all under another element of the environment, the 24/7 media spotlight.
“All of these things add up to a very, very complex way of warfare,” Casey said. To understand it and successfully prosecute it will also take leaders of intelligence and character, an area the Army is working to develop.
What might this future look like? Casey used Hezbollah, a non-state actor, in Lebanon in 2006 as an example. The United States and United Kingdom officially list Hezbollah as a terrorist group. Hezbollah began the conflict with some 13,000 rockets of all kinds and fired some 4,200. They used surface-to-air missiles and shot down helicopters, they fired cruise missiles and hit a ship. In addition, they used unmanned aerial vehicles, both armed and unarmed, and they used IEDs to channel forces into an ambush. Hezbollah blended asymmetric techniques and modern technologies.
That’s the sort of operation the Army has to think about, he said. The future cannot be predicted, but the Army can’t afford to get it wrong, which is why the future force must be versatile and has to have the structure, training and leaders to operate across the full spectrum of conflict.
The Army capstone concept to be unveiled next month says that for full spectrum operations Army formations will simultaneously apply offensive, defensive and stability operations to achieve decisive results.
“It is going to cause us to move in new and different direction,” he said, and stimulate intellectual discussion.